Visual excerpt from the PBS HDTV ''Runaway Universe'', courtesy WGBH-NOVA and Tom Lucas Productions.The Adaptive Mesh Refinement simulation grid automatically refines into subgrids to develop small-scale features, generating over half a terabyte of data. We see gravitation forming nested hierarchies which vary many orders of magnitude. Tiny fluctuations in the density of the early universe are amplified into a network of interconnected filaments. Condensing gas clouds give birth to new stars and merge into whirling galaxies which congregate, collide, and interact in a fiery cosmic dance.


This movie is part of the collection: SIGGRAPH

Director: Donna Cox, Stuart Levy, Robert Patterson
Producer: Donna Cox (visualization), Tom Lucas (NOVA)
Production Company: National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Keywords: Animation Screening Room 2001
Contact Information: cox@ncsa.uiuc.edu<BR>virdir.ncsa.uiuc.edu/virdir/virdir.html<BR>605 East Springfield<BR><BR>Champaign, IL 61820<BR>United States<BR>217 244 2005<BR>Fax: 217 244 2909

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Reviewer: micah6vs8 - - November 14, 2011
Subject: Slightly Interesting
I was too busy looking at the CG (muddy) to actively listen to the narrator. It took a few tries to hear her, but when I did it was the usual au courant scientific drivel. I wonder in 20 years from now how much 'science' will have been 'updated' and this looking quite dated indeed.

Reviewer: angroid - - December 28, 2010
Subject: Ugly and a lie
Preaching the empty words of ignorant theory along with ugly muddied graphics.

That people actually like / believe this fairy tale is frightening.

Reviewer: Doodlebuggery - - June 2, 2010
Subject: It's interesting.... and they got it right.
At approximately 2/3 of the way through you can see jesus creating a star cluster in the top right hand corner of the video.

Reviewer: DiamondPaul - - March 26, 2009
Subject: More great stuff
I love this stuff. It is short because a huge super computer is no where near as fast as the massively parallel computer that is the size of a melon called a brain. The simulation probably took a long time to run. My guess is that each neuron in a brain is a computer. keath_199 wake up, there is a real world out there.

Reviewer: kerriganm - - January 7, 2008
Subject: Beautiful but way too short
Lovely, lyrical. Had to give it 5 stars instead of 4 to balance the creationist types commenting here. ;-)

Reviewer: Claeyborn - - May 29, 2007
Subject: Nice Computer Graphics...
It's too bad, that the Big Bang or evolution can't be proven with computer graphics and empty words. I'm going back to watching Star Trek Voyager now, where I can listen to some more evolution fiction.

Reviewer: DS_Undertaker - - June 29, 2006
Subject: Sweet
it's a sweet little animation which is mind-blowing from the proper perspective.

Keath i have no idea what you're talking about in your review. what does expansion have to do with a hot universe? and what does single star formation have to do with the large scale structure of the universe? and note: there is no "wrong way" in space when refering to planetary rotation and orbits.

this animation is pretty darn sweet but not long enough!

Reviewer: keath_199 - - September 26, 2005
Subject: Good Graphics
Pretty good CG, only problem is that the story line wasn't true.
If the universe did expand for 15 billion years, that would make even the hundred years a pretty crowded & hot place, life on planets would be un unhabitable not to mention the atmosphere levels would be off.

No one has seen or witnessed a birth of a star, they assume that that is the case because it is in a whirling pattern thuss it had to come into an explosion some time, how would that explain that some of the planets are rotating the wrong way?

Anyway's besides that, its a pretty neat animation.

Reviewer: davidlaska - - September 3, 2005
Subject: great but you don,t get to see it
This is actually a very good animation if only you could see it, It is much shorter than a trailer. It is like watching the beginning of a show but it cuts out when you realize that this might be building up to something spectacular. There is also a lot of buzz of how it is HDTV quality (mpeg2) or (dvd) which this short piece honors that. So I think if I go to the source and they have it available on media, I will buy it. They had the whole show for sale for home use. But I could not believe it was on the low end vhs tape and not DVD while the other product were on both. That is all, I had it.

Reviewer: leng46uk - - January 21, 2005
Subject: Teasing taste of a magnificent looking animation.
A breif snipet of beautiful graphics from a supercomuted simulation of cosmic evolution. The voiceover is informative and there is only minor superficial graphics imposed upon the animation.
The section of animation is just too short.

Reviewer: shegul - - April 8, 2004
Subject: Not much to be seen
This may be some trial. Released from junk basket.

Credits

Cosmological Adaptive Mesh Refinement Simulation: Michael Norman, Brian O'Shea and Greg Bryan, Grand Challenge Cosmology Consortium (GC3)